Caviar delivers fave restaurant dishes to your door

Burrata dragoncello with pistachio, corona olive oil and sea salt from A16, one of several dishes available to order from the Rockridge restaurant for delivery via new-to-the-East-Bay service Caviar. Photo: Caviar

The startup which is run by four UC Berkeley graduates just two years out of school, allows you to order up dishes from your favorite restaurants for delivery within an hour of placing your call.

The twist is that Caviar, which already operates in San Francisco, DC, Chicago, Manhattan and Seattle, is contracting with restaurants that don’t ordinarily do delivery. So far, the service has signed up 16 East Bay spots — including Plum Bar, La Mediterranée, Binh Minh Quan, Hawker Faire, A16 Rockridge, Hopscotch, Phil’s Sliders, Ajanta, and Desco — and many more will be coming online soon, at a rate of one a week, such as Homeroom and Ike’s Lair.

For Jason Wang and his three co-founders, Andy Zhang, Richard Din, and Shawn Tsao — all self-confessed foodies who bonded while living in the same Cal frat house — the driving idea for the company was efficiency.

“It’s a problem for a lot of people to stand in line for an hour waiting for a table at a restaurant they like,” he said, citing as an example families with young children.

The four entrepreneurs — two business and two computer science majors — were deeply into the local food scene while still in college. Wang, with a friend, runs a blog, City Foodsters, that documents their culinary experiences around the world, be it sampling Per Se in New York or Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo.

The company works with 150 drivers in the Bay Area who use thermal bags to keep dishes at the correct temperature. A proprietary Caviar app allows customers to track their orders, and they guarantee delivery within an hour. Caviar takes a 25% cut on each sale.

Caviar appears to be on a roll. It recently raised $15 million in funding, and Wang said they are pulling in eight-figure annual revenues on the basis on “tens of thousands of customers.”

There is competition, of course. Seamless is probably the dominant name in the market, and there’s been a flurry of similar startups in the sector, including Munchery, and Postmates. Most of these services work with restaurants that already deliver, however. And, for the East Bay at least, if not for New York, Caviar is a step ahead. Until now, having dinner or a catered lunch delivered from many of the restaurants on its roster was near-on impossible.

Another point of difference from, say, Seamless, is that Caviar has a professional photographer take a shot of every dish offered on its site. Most services simply offer a text menu.

The proof is in the pudding, of course.

Nathan Johnson, Director of Operations for A16 and A16 Rockridge, which both use Caviar, said he has been impressed so far with the service, but that he will be quick to sever ties at the first sign of customer dissatisfaction.

“We want to be sure the quality of the food we offer for delivery is as high as that we serve in the restaurant,” he said.

For that reason, the restaurant offers a carefully curated selection of dishes that its chefs are confident will travel. And they take steps — like having salad dressings on the side — to ensure there’s no degradation, Johnson said.

Johnson added that orchestrating a delivery service on its own would not be cost efficient for A16, which is why partnering with Caviar made sense.

Wang concurs. “Most restaurants would lose money if they tried to do this themselves,” he said. “They would need two drivers and would likely find they couldn’t fulfill the orders they get and would be turning down business.”

Caviar offers on-demand or scheduled (up to a week in advance) deliveries for homes and offices. There’s a flat-rate delivery fee of $9.99 and no minimum order. Right now, in its launch phase for the East Bay all deliveries are FREE until May 25.

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Berkeley Guest

This is a great idea, but as a “family with young children” (one of the target audiences mentioned by a co-founder), the $9.99 delivery fee + non-negotiable 18% automatic gratuity on all orders makes this too expensive to consider. I know they’ve got a lot of costs to make the service what it is (website, app, food photographers, drivers, etc.), but with the delivery fee and automatic gratuity, I could have bought another entree. I hope they can bring their prices/fees down to make it more accessible.

Guest

This service sounds great to me…it’s not a replacement for the restaurant experience, but an alternative for those who maybe WOULD be customers but for long waits, transit hassles, inability or unwillingness to go out, or whatever the issue might be.

I’d love to use this service but they don’t delivery to North Berkeley yet. if you are in the Gourmet Ghetto, forget about it. We are three block up from Shattuck and Cedar and their system said we were out of their delivery area for the East Bay. Too bad, I love Plum Bar’s food.

Chris J

What? $9.95 delivery on TOP of the cost of the food?

Nix.

Chris J

Well, good luck. No doubt the restaurants are going to charge a bit of a premium on their deliverable items. A small extra price to pay, one supposes. No problem with it, really, but as others have said, I would prefer to eat AT the restaurant.

disqus_S1ql48Vi9i

the whole point of those great eateries is getting the whole experience! just not the same eating congealed food at home in while watching Jeopardy.